Budget

“…We need a Constitution that will protect our children and guide the courts to make decisions that keep families together and that are in the child’s best interests. I know the people of West Cork would welcome the opportunity to say ‘yes, we value childhood’ and ‘yes, Ireland values all children and their rights’.” Labour Deputy Micheal McCarthy, Cork Nov 2011

In one sense, it would be hard for anyone to disagree with the sentiment expressed by Labour Deputy Michael McCarthy back in November 2011, prior to the referendum. However a lone parent who is the mother of an autistic boy last week attempted to highlight her dissatisfaction with the proposed cuts to the Carer’s allowance certainly didn’t feel the love when she went to Deputy McCarthy’s constituency office in Dunmanway last week.

As we get closer to the financial and social endgame resulting from Fianna Fail and the Greens governance are country, their incompetence and lies are laid bare for all to see. Those of us who were advised to go and commit suicide by the then leader Mr. Bertie Ahern and didn’t, can see their very worst nightmares coming to fruition. We knew it was going to be bad but we could never have conceived just how bad it has become. And this is really just the start.

In a speech in 2007 Mr. Ahern promised that in a fall would reduce the gap between what we spent and what we took in taxes than revenues. He lied. Mr. Cowen, who was then the finance minister, simply went along with what ever he was advised to do by those total incompetents in the Department of Finance. The big accountancy and legal firms operating in Dublin who oversaw audits of the major banks and financial institutions, and charged millions for it, reported that everything was okay, these companies also lied. Full article on www.EamonnBlaney.com […]

My proposal for removing up to 100,000 public servants is relatively straightforward although it will have to be accompanied by substantial reforms in work practices, promotion policy, pension entitlements and attitude. For example, the defined benefit, indexed linked pension scheme is simply too expensive for our country to afford for the foreseeable future. The abolition of this pension must include all public servants whether employed now, in the past or in the future. If new legislation or constitutional amendment is required to make this happen, then so be it. The fact that there are people who retired over ten years ago and are presently receiving pension that are actually higher now than their salary they were on when they left, is outrageous. […]

Why the public outcry over what will be the ‘most draconian’ budget in the history of the State ? The reason I ask is assuming that it does make it through the Dail vote all that it will have achieved is getting an additional €4 Billion into our public piggy bank. ‘ €4 billion, that’s an enormous amount of additional revenue” ? I hear you cry. It is enormous but it is not nearly enough. Unfortunately, since I pointed out in a previous posting (economic-civil-war-revisited ) the actual amount of our debt has increased by a further €8 Billion, simply because the Government did not act back in February when they knew the scale of the problem. If that’s not bad enough, next years spending will increase by an additional €5 Billion compared to this year ! […]